He grinned. “Hard rock’s no good?”
“No good at all. In fact, it’s seriously making me reconsider our relationship.” Inwardly she cringed at the word relationship, hoping it didn’t sound like she was putting pressure on Micah to discuss their situation. With less than one week left of production, though, she should be putting pressure on him. Eventually they would have to talk about it. She knew she should bring it up, but every time she had the chance, she pushed it off, not wanting to ruin the moment.
“Fine,” Micah said, turning off the music. “Let’s talk instead.”
“Okay.” Now. Talk about it now. “What do you want to talk about?” God, she was a chicken.
“I don’t know. Uh, how’s your movie going?”
Maddie frowned. That was an odd question. He was with her every time she worked on it, and he usually watched and gave her feedback whenever she completed a section. He’d viewed everything she had done so far with his mother two days before. Maddie had backed out of their breakfast date at the last minute. She didn’t think she could spend another occasion pretending she wasn’t head over heels for Micah, especially not one so intimate.
“I haven’t done anything since the last time you saw it. Why?”
“I just love the theme of the movie. And so did Lulu, I know I told you that already. Freedom through flying. It’s really good.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. He had told her Lulu’d been very impressed, and Maddie had been proud of herself for it. But every time she thought of Lulu and her movie in the same sentence, she recalled Lulu’s comparison of Maddie to Micah’s ex. And she couldn’t bear that anyone might think she was using Micah for his film connections.
But all of those thoughts were miles off from whatever Micah was talking about now. She just couldn’t quite follow his direction yet.
“And how about heights? Do you have a fear of heights?”
“No,” she answered tentatively. “Do you?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you being so weird?”
“Weird? I’m not being weird. I just realized I didn’t know if you were afraid of heights or not. You know. Standard get-to-know-you question. I really should have already known this.”
“Uh-huh.” Maddie didn’t believe him. He was up to something.
“Do you have anything you’d like to know about me?”
She’d learned a lot about Micah in the last few weeks—things she never gleaned about him from the countless interviews she’d watched and read over the years—but she knew there was still more to discover. Everything. She wanted to know everything about him.
Like, for example, what would happen with them after the shoot ended on Friday? And where the heck was he taking her?
But she didn’t ask those questions. He’d told her that today was a surprise, had woken her at four in the morning on their day off, and told her to dress warm. He refused to say anything about it. After twenty minutes of probing, she’d dropped it.
Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to steer the conversation to their relationship—she didn’t want to ruin his carefully planned surprise.
“Let’s see.” She searched for a safe but meaningful query. “Oh, I know. Did you always want to be an actor?”
“Seriously?” He turned off the main road they’d been following onto a smaller windy road. “That’s what you want to know? You can find that out from a good Google search.”
“In every interviews I’ve read you’ve said ‘yes’.”
“There you go,” he said, throwing his arm out dramatically.
“But I’ve always sensed you were hiding something.”
He peered at her. “How do you do that? How do you know me so well?”
Because we’re meant to be together. She shrugged.
“No. I didn’t always want to be an actor.” He looked at her as if gauging her reaction. “My mom was an actress so she got me acting in commercials when I was about thirteen. And I hated it. We didn’t live in the film industry part of the city and no one in my school was into anything artsy. Kids picked on me, called me a fag, beat me up on a regular basis. In fact, that’s how I met Fudge. He stepped up for me and has been protecting me ever since.”
Wow. She had no idea.
“Do you know how he got his nickname?”
She shook her head.
“Because he used to scare kids so bad, they’d fudge their pants.”
She giggled.
“Anyway. Then I turned sixteen. My high school was putting on David and Lisa. I didn’t really want to do it, but my girlfriend—”
“Girlfriend?”
He ignored her. “Thought it would be super sexy if I was in it. So I tried out and I got the part of David.”
“Which is a great part. Definitely super sexy.”
“Yes, it is.” He slid his free hand over to grab hers. “But on top of that, my high school theater director was amazing. She taught us more than just memorizing lines and blocking. She taught us process, how to make choices in acting, how to create a character internally and externally. I fell in love.”
“I’m assuming you fell in love with the acting, not the girlfriend.” Not that she was jealous of a high school sweetheart. Not in the least.
“Totally the acting. I broke up with the girlfriend before the show even went up.”
“Awesome.” She grinned.
“I started taking classes outside of school—speech, movement, acting for the camera. I got a personal coach. Then an agent. Then I started doing indies, which I loved. Then I got Stu.”
“And the rest is history.”
“I suppose so.”
He was silent for several seconds. The morning light brightened, the sun just coming over the edge of the horizon. She let go of his hand and rummaged through her purse until she found her sunglasses.
When Micah spoke again, his voice was low and serious. “That breakup was because of the show, actually. Even back then, acting interfered with my relationship.”
“With your teenage girlfriend? How so?” She didn’t like what he was hinting at and was grateful for the dark of her glasses so he wouldn’t see the glare in her eyes.
“We broke up because she was jealous of my acting. She said I spent too much time away from her. We fought and fought about it. It was awful.”